“What are you doing, Bob?”

“You just wait and see, pop.”

And what did that young rascal do but swim straight across that pond and then turn about and swim back again, without pausing for breath?  Not only that, but, when in the very deepest portion, he dove, floated on his back, trod water, and kicked up his heels like a frisky colt.

“How’s that, pop?  You didn’t know I could swim, did you?” he asked, as he came smilingly up the bank.

“I had no idea of such a thing,” I replied, my whole being fluttering with gratitude and delight; “I think I’ll have to reward you for that.”

And when he had donned his clothes, and we started homeward, I slipped a twisted bank-bill into his hands.  I am really ashamed to tell its denomination, and Bob and I never hinted anything about it to his mother.

And now as to the question, Who shall explain it?  I think I can.  I have a weakness for boiled beef and cabbage.  The meat is healthful enough, but, as every one knows, or ought to know, cabbage, although one of the most digestible kinds of food when raw, is just the opposite in a boiled state.  I knew the consequences of eating it, but in the absence of my good wife that day I disposed of so much that I deserved the oppressive indigestion that followed.

That fact, I am convinced, fully explains the dreadful “presentiment” which made me so miserable all the afternoon.

On our way home we passed the house of Mrs. Clarkson.  I could not forbear stopping and ringing her bell.  She answered it in person.

“Mrs. Clarkson, Bob is on his way home from swimming, and I thought I would let him hear about that wonderful dream—­”

But the door was slammed in my face.

I said at the opening of this sketch that I “had” a boy named Bob.  God be thanked, I have him yet, and no lustier, brighter, or more manly youth ever lived, and my prayer is that he may be spared to soothe the declining years of his father and mother, whose love for him is beyond the power of words to tell.

A FOOL OR A GENIUS.

CHAPTER I.

Josiah Hunter sat on his porch one summer afternoon, smoking his pipe, feeling dissatisfied, morose and sour on account of his only son Tim, who, he was obliged to confess to himself, gave every indication of proving a disappointment to him.

Mr. Hunter was owner of the famous Brereton Quarry & Stone Works, located about a mile above the thriving village of Brereton, on the eastern bank of the Castaran river, and at a somewhat greater distance below the town of Denville.  The quarry was a valuable one and the owner was in comfortable circumstances, with the prospect of acquiring considerable more of a fortune out of the yield of excellent building stone.  The quarry had been worked for something like ten years, and the discovery that he had such a fine deposit on his small farm was in the minds of his neighbors equivalent to the finding of a gold mine, for as the excavation proceeded, the quality of the material improved and Mr. Hunter refused an offer from a company which, but for the stone, would have been a very liberal price for the whole farm.